You Know, Just In Case
by SweetSinger2010
Summary: “But frankly,” he continued, suddenly flippant, “I’d rather you just make sure that I don’t get shot in the first place, you being my partner and all.” “Likewise!” She cried laughingly. “DiNozzo, if you ever let me die, I will kill you.”


Author's Note: This is spawning from a fic that I'll be posting soon, so I'll be referencing this then, but for now it'll stand alone quite perfectly. Hope you enjoy! Disclaimer: I own nothing of NCIS.

You Know, Just In Case

"Whatime'sit?"

Tony mumbled sleepily, incoherently, as he sat up and stretched, yawning. Ziva looked at the clock on the dashboard.

"Three forty-five," she answered wearily. Tony grunted his displeasure and reached down, pressing a button that returned his seat to its original posture. Beads of rain rolled down the car windows and collected thickly on the windshield. The water distorted Tony's view of the pitch-dark nieghborhood. A single street light flickered on and off, casting an intermittent, eerie yellow glow through the continuous drizzle.

"Still nothing?"

"Not so much as even a cat," Ziva confirmed bitterly. "The meet should have taken place by now."

"It probably did, somewhere."

"But not here."

"Nope."

"Then someone was trying to throw us up by giving us the wrong location."

Tony nodded, too spent to correct his partner's botched attempt at using an American idiom. He glanced over at her. She sat in the driver's seat with her knees tucked under her chin, childishly. Errant curls were beginning to stray from the French braid tucked at the nape of her neck. Tony noticed, with a pang, that the green glow of display lights accentuated the dark circles etched under her eyes. She looked like she was beyond exhausted.

"Your turn." Tony announced suddenly, forcing himself to sound more awake and alert than he really was. "Lay down."

Ziva gave him an eloquent look.

"It's not a debate, David." He spoke lowly, authoritatively, using his best I'm-your-senior-field-agent voice. Ziva obeyed with a grudging glare, reclining her seat and curling onto her left side, away from him.

"Normally I would refuse, but," she paused, sighing wearily, "I cannot see straight anymore."

"I'll keep an eye on things," he assured. Strangely, she found his words comforting. Even so, she could not fall asleep. Her Mossad training was too deeply ingrained to allow it. She could only let her mind relax, listening to the lulling sound of the rain as it came more steadily down.

Tony knew she was awake. His senses were sharper now at four in the morning, heightened by fatigue, than they ever were at four in the afternoon. He had been listening for the soft, rhythmic breathing that would alert him to Ziva's slumber, but it never came. He waited half an hour to address her.

"Would music help?" He asked softly.

"No, thank you." She returned, somewhat taken aback by his thoughtfulness.

"I couldn't sleep either, my first few stake-outs," he chuckled knowingly. He added drily, "Only in my case, it was because I was afraid that Gibbs was going to head-slap me for falling asleep on the job. What's your excuse?"

"In Mossad, you cannot afford to lose your focus for even a moment. If you do, you'll most likely end up dead." She spoke matter-of-factly.

Tony took this in slowly, thinking for the first time how difficult it must have been for Ziva to adjust to NCIS. "Was it something you worried about?"

"What? Losing focus?"

"No," Tony responded hesitantly. "Dying."

Ziva slowly rolled onto her back, turning her eyes to his. "No." Her voice was low. "I didn't worry about it more than I worried about anything else."

"But you _did_ worry."

"Sometimes," she admitted quietly, as if in defeat. She had been brought up to live in fearlessness. "No one wants to die, Tony. Not even a killer like myself."

DiNozzo glanced sharply at his partner, trying to discern in her face the strange, self-demeaning note he'd heard in her voice. But she had averted her eyes.

"Hey," he said after several minutes of thick silence. "We're friends, right?"

"Yes," Ziva responded immediately. Blushing in the dark, she amended by adding, "At least, I like to think so."

"Yeah, me too."

When Tony added nothing to that statement, Ziva sighed. She knew him well enough to know that some strange thing was going to spill out of his mouth, right after it finished rattling around his too-busy brain. She raised her seat and resumed her surveillance of the desolate street, waiting. She passed a hand over her bleary eyes.

"Ziva."

"Hmm?"

"We've been partners for almost two years now."

Ziva raised her head and glowered at Tony, suddenly irritated. If he was trying to come on to her, _now_….Well, she was _not_ in the mood for his antics. "And?"

He seemed to ignore her sharp tone. "And I think that partners should talk about…things."

"_What_ things, Tony?" Ziva tried to infuse a little more patience in her voice, sorry she'd snapped at him before. She noticed that he, too, looked very tired. She also noticed the tightness around his mouth and brow as his clear blue-green eyes stared out the windshield without seeing.

"I never really _talked_ to Kate. You know, about stuff that mattered. We talked about cases, about people we knew. Mostly we just teased each other." Tony paused, smiling fondly. "Ruthlessly."

Ziva stiffened and gazed at him questioningly. Kate…Ari…it was all too fresh, for her at least.

"So, when Kate got shot," he continued dully, the old pain flaring up unbidden, "I had no idea what she wanted."

"Wanted?"

"Yeah." He turned and looked Ziva squarely in the face. "We put our lives on the line every time we leave the office," he explained, half speaking to her, half speaking to himself. Ziva wondered which _we_ he was referring to.

"I know," she said lamely. "So?"

"_So_, what if Kate hadn't died? What if—What if she'd ended up on life support?"

Ziva held Tony's eyes, hardly comprehending the conversation taking place. It was like he was rambling on in some exhaustion-induced delirium. Maybe he was. "Tony—"

He cut her off. "Really," he said solemnly. "What if she had? I wouldn't have known…I wouldn't have known what to do."

Ziva shook her head, struggling for the right thing to say. This was by far the most serious conversation she'd _ever_ had with him; she did not know how to handle a no-nonsense DiNozzo. "You would have done the right thing," she stammered slowly. "You have always done the right thing by us…your team."

Tony reclined in his seat, biting his lower lip, mulling over her answer. Suddenly, he realized how bizarre the situation was becoming. He laughed. "I guess I just want to make sure that I don't screw anything up in the future."

Ziva took a deep breath and blew it out in a huff. "Well, I prefer breathing on my own, so…."

"Gotcha." Tony nodded in understanding.

"And what about you, Tony? What do _you_ want?"

"Ahhh…" He let his voice trail off as he considered carefully. "Give it forty-eight hours for me to come around. After that," and he stopped speaking, resorting to sound effects and hand gestures to finish his sentence. _Pull the plug._ "But frankly," he continued, suddenly flippant, "I'd rather you just make sure that I don't get shot in the first place, you being my partner and all."

"Likewise!" She cried laughingly. "DiNozzo, if you _ever_ let me die, I will _kill_ you."

Tony cracked one of his famous grins. Ziva looked at the clock, shaking her head. It was almost five o'clock.

"I'm glad we had this talk." Tony spoke as if he'd experienced a great spiritual enlightenment. Ziva knew it was an act, his morose attitude having vanished as suddenly as it had come. She replied truthfully nonetheless.

"Me too."

"It's good. You know, just in case."

"Right, just in case."

Tony smiled winningly, again. "Just one more slightly-morbid question, and then we'll never talk about this _ever again_."

Ziva tried to glare. "Good."

"How old were you," he asked playfully, "when you realized that you aren't invincible?"

She snorted. "I _wasn't_ old, Tony. What about _you_?"

He pulled his cap down over his eyes and sank low into the leather seat, kicking his feet up onto the dash. "Baby, I am _Very_ Special Agent Anthony DiNozzo. I _am_ invincible."

Ziva rolled her eyes; only Tony could ruin a perfectly serious moment with a cocky comment like that. But when she looked at his signature smile and imagined the sparkle in his beautiful eyes, her stomach did flip-flops. And she almost believed him.

A/N: The end! Gahh! I finally finished my first NCIS fic. Let me know what you think, especially if you have any ideas on what I can improve for next time. Thanks for reading!

~SweetSinger2010


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